Pink Mountaintops :: ‘Shakedown’

Leave it to Pink Mountaintops to create a stunningly gritty real(ish)-life music video.

The video for the group’s latest single ‘Shakedown’ – off of the amazing album, Get Back – stars Vancouver-based photographer and DJ Mandy-Lyn Antoniou and has a guest appearance by J. Mascis. Directed by Simon Chan, who last worked with Pink Mountaintops’ Stephen McBean on Black Mountain’s ‘Hair Song’, the video takes us through the technicolour world of the girl who gets on the bus. She silently slides a cassette into her walkman and McBean’s lo-fi vocals boom in: “I saw the photographs / Lying in the streets…”

We follow the girl as she rides past crowds of people on the streets, as she walks by a group of choreographed roller skaters. The video eventually takes a trippy turn. There’s a teddy bear eating cereal (I think) on TV, and lots of Mrs. Pac-Man.

Despite the oddball take on a day in the life, the video is surrealist normalcy at its finest. It’s colourful and grimey and real, and it compliments the song so perfectly that it could very well be a movie scene and ‘Shakedown’ the soundtrack.

Pink Mountaintops is also embarking on a European tour; find the dates here. And be sure to pick up a copy of Get Back, here.